Maestia – US Press Tour and First Impressions

Maestia - US Press Tour

By Michael Sagoe (mikedot), OnRPG Journalist

New to Gravity’s Warp Portal of F2P titles comes Maestia, a fantasy MMORPG focused on everything for everyone, including a mercenary system, faction based PvP and small tweaks on several time-tested MMO features. Even though I ended up showing a little late to the tour, I managed to get a quick look at Maestia during its Open Beta launch.

When starting out, players will have a choice between one of two factions: The Superion Guardians and the Temple Knights. The Temple Knights are trying to prevent an evil Dark Lord from rising, while the Superions are trying to summon the Dark Lord so they can defeat it once and for all. It’s an interesting premise where both factions are good guys, but still at odds with each other.

Character creation and customization features your typical set of MMORPG class types such as Warriors, Rangers, Clerics and Mages. Customization was a bit on the average side, offering choices between face, tattoo, hairstyle, height, body types and color palettes. Since I was in hurry so I could join the session already in progress, so I decided to go with a Ranger (allied with the Temple Knights)

After creating my character and getting logged in, a quick glimpse at the world of Maestia through an animated cut-scene was shown. After that, I was dropped into the home town of the Temple Knights, with some pretty straight forward tutorial quests to follow. As I waited for the press group, I browsed around the town for a bit and completed a few quests. Now it seems like some pretty basic stuff, but to help players go through questing quickly, Maestia introduces a “Prayer system” where players can pray to a god to seek wisdom, advice and a few quests right on the spot.

As the press group returned from their dungeon run, GMs took the time to explain one of the game’s key features: The mercenary system. Players can hire NPCs as mercenaries in order to tackle dungeons, which is great for solo players or players that are currently missing a few friends to do a dungeon run with, and since mercenaries can tank, heal or deal damage, you won’t have to worry about any trinity issues. I didn’t have a chance to try out this system for myself, so I don’t have much of an idea of how controlling mercenaries in dungeons could work, though I’m sure it would require a ton of micro management skills when bringing a whole bunch of them.

The best part of the mercenary system is that players can become an NPC mercenary when they’re logged off, allowing other players to use your character. While you’re away, your character can earn money and EXP.

It was then time to get our hands dirty with a little competition. Maestia features both open and structured PvP. For our press tour, we participated in an arena match. It was me and three others on team Temple Knights against four on Team Superion. The rules were simple: Defeat as many enemies as possible within the time limit.

As an archer, I was abusing range as much as possible, lighting players on fire and picking off weaklings. Two players on the enemy team got tired of my nonsense and decided to pick me off and take me out on several occasions.

As a quick note: The combat plays out like any other point & click MMORPG out there, but to help players keep track of combat stats, there’s a bunch of message pop ups for skill usage. It’s a neat little feature, but it can be hard to keep up with after a long battle. Luckily, this can be turned off.

The match ended with our team losing by four points. I, however, managed to rack up the most kills.

The tour was pretty much over by then, but I wanted to check out a dungeon before signing off, so we went over to Deadman’s Hall to get a glimpse at one of the latest dungeons available.

Dungeons in Maestia can be done on either normal or expert mode. Normal mode runs are basic and can be done solo w/ mercenaries, but expert mode runs are more challenging since not only do enemies hit harder, but there may be other objectives and tasks that you must complete while advancing.

Running through this dungeon went pretty smoothly for us since we were all a bit overleveled, but was still a joy to run through due to a well-crafted atmosphere.

Overall, Maestia is an MMORPG that will surely have something for every kind of MMORPG gamer out there, and with Open Beta, there will be plenty more to partake including Open World PvP, Talent Trees and more.

Maestia is now available to play in the US, so feel free to check it out!